


years...

by alllexxx3



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Jewish Character, Jewish Identity, M/M, Separation Anxiety, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 23:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11793798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alllexxx3/pseuds/alllexxx3
Summary: otabek and yuri have been out of touch for reasons out of their control. the fic explores the chance for the feelings to survive when they can't be communicated.





	years...

**Author's Note:**

> as the tags point out, the internal happening within the character's psyche exceeds incomparably the outer plot in the fic. if stream of consciousness is not your thing, you may not wanna read it.  
> plus, english's not native to me. i'm certain, the text could be written much better by someone else.  
> the ortography's intentional choice though.  
> well, warnings have been made. whatever your decision, i hope you enjoy it.

yuri had seen him while walking down the staircase headed to practice. it was a long, in a way romantic staircase, so he'd had the time not just to note the svelte silhouette at the end of it but also to lay eyes into theirs an instant before he gently slid them away, a ghost of a sting in his heart. something about the soul and the shocking purity within the coffee gaze flashed familiar in a way the teen had gotten used to avoid already.

still, the road to his current limbo had been anything but easy.

the first time his “blazing heart” pre-sensed a far yet, just latent whiff from the hypnotic waters of lethe, he'd lost his peace for weeks. he'd gone back to the hell of losing beka.

again.

this time, a grade more desperate because it hadn't even been beka himself – but the **love** for him. the emotional legacy he'd left within yuri's heart.

then, the boy had felt smashed with guilt and blasphemy as if he'd killed beka with his own hands – by letting his heart relinquish... everything he'd lived for.

he'd felt dead inside.

“how dare you just conceive a letting go if beka did the possible (and some impossible) to be and to remain with you in each and every day in the years to come!”, his soul had screamed within his chest.

“he wrote you poems. he buried you in gifts. he laid his very essence in each and every gift so it'd feel like him wrapping you in a loving hug each time! he took care of you not to be cold. to be soft. to be spoiled.

to FEEL him!

how dare you an instant even flash a giving up on him!”

and that was true. only a peek around his room would catch beka's love absorbed in every detail: the butterfly magnets over the fridge, the fluffy socks on yuri's feet, the pink hoodies, the pile of warm clothes which beka had been sending daily! for months! before he'd... turned into a memory. but yuri could still touch beka's soul within each word of his poems. he could yet escape with beka to their secret garden in the glowing stars and dandelion stickers on the wall. and of course, he could always hug beka with angie – the stuffed beauty he's been sleeping with since the day she arrived. all the books and toys which could possibly make him smile!...

“how dare you!”, yuri had hissed at himself, vision blurred, while looking at all that.

and then he'd put his entire self in resisting the oblivion. he'd cried out for help to potya and sara. he'd taken the time for an extended conversation to G-d every day in spite of the pressing practice schedule. he'd even stacked a bunch of pink prayer candles – he'd done everything he could think of.

all, with the sole purpose to preserve the Love and to defeat the stupor tide.

still... it kept carrying him away. a trifle further every day. first, they were the pics he'd stopped carrying in his hand everywhere. then, they were the pics he took down from his wall and hid from sight.

when he'd stripped down the very last presence of beka... he'd felt alone in a way which no human could bare: it hadn't been just a physical solitude. it'd been emotional. and worse, it'd been a spiritual desolation beyond the limits of a soul.

“how would i live now”, he'd asked G-d utterly defeated, “if the love for him since day one has always been the same feeling as the love for You! how could i lose him?! how could i live without You!”

“if the love for beka, is the same as the love for G-d, then what do you fear?”, came the simple answer. “could you forget G-d just because you don't carry images of Him?! there are no images of G-d! neither should there be! does it make you love Him less?”

“that's impossible”, yuri had waved away the questions, with no delay, without single doubt, as they were redundant.

“then?”...

then he'd taken a moment to reflect about that simple and oh so clear revelation.

“but the love for You... it ain't... You know... sexual. it ain't... hot, like... You know how, right?...”

the answer had come calm and easy again:

“then so let it be...”

that has been the day when the boy had seen his colors switch from pink to white. from tiger stripes to unicorns. and his love, from hot... to healing.

“then so let it be...”, he told himself again.

that's also been the day when he'd taken beka's watch and wristband off his wrists and had kissed them goodbye with the whispered promise “תמיד!” before he'd carefully tucked them in the package box which still had beka's handwriting on it.

and ever since yuri had slowly, a shade at a time, learned not to fall apart while watching beka convert from living fire within his heart into a noetic memory within his mind. first, he'd come to terms with the fact that to remember someone mentally is the only life remaining for them within oneself once the blazing feel had burned away. then, he'd started getting used to look away with no resistance from everything that had a hint of beka in it.

and now, his eyes glided away from the stranger's with the ease of never having stopped in them. the boy turned to lock the door and stepped down the threshold intended to walk away. he'd almost forgotten the person in front of his home, focused on his current practice program, when he heard his name:

"yuri..."

the voice was soft and cautious, loaded with feelings...

yuri stopped and turned sight back into the guy's warm eyes. then suddenly, all the pieces of his fragmented world started moving up and coming together in place to an image which was his entire universe. image at the same time, familiar and seen million times within his soul, and utterly unknown. image for which he lived. person... who was his heaven.

the grasp made him dizzy. in a glimpse, the skates felt too heavy on his shoulder and he had to gather strength before he could push them off and down. the practice, the program, yakov... all the rest of the world had stopped existing while the shape of the young man he was staring at was becoming sharper in details.

all the beauty he'd been sipping a spoon at a time for two years because it'd been too overwhelming to take in at once!... a day he'd delighted in the tickles looking at the skinny tummy of topless beka. a day he'd taken to love beka's pretty chest and back. a day for beka's shoulder. a day for beka's elbow... then over and over, again and again... and every time it'd taken his breath away as for the first time. “how could G-d make you so pretty! how can you be so beautiful! how is that even possible!”

now, all that was hitting him at once. the lithe body. the dark hair he'd dreamt of running fingers through. the sweet lips he'd kissed thousand times. and most of all, these unbearable, consuming eyes in the color of hot, hot honey!...

the air was suddenly scarce!...

beka leaned in with intention to approach. on the outside, yuri didn't really react. it was an inner backing off. a freezing. a strikingly keen lightning within the depths of his ice blue stare.

still, beka froze instantly. and upheld the distance.

one look into elder's pretty eyes and yuri knew he'd felt his emotional block. “of course”, he thought. “he's always been the most sensitive barometer for the weather within me...”

an eternity, or a moment, passed in which both lost themselves in each other's eyes.

“...you haven't lost it”, yuri finished his thought. and it was rather a sun warm gleam within the brown depth of beka's gaze than a twitching up at the corner of his lips which dusted the teen's cheeks with faint blush as he realized the elder could still read him like an open book. he looked down and sucked in the inside edge of his lip admitting to himself that precisely beka's ability to comprehend him better than he could comprehend himself, ability which no other human being had ever acquired, was what changed his life and world in essence. and to the teen it's been so hot that even after beka'd become a memory, any other human being would still completely fail to even catch the corner of his interest. “and even if it means that i'll have to live the rest of my life with just the memory of it, i'd rather that than accept anything else. the more, once i've had it for real, i just can't take anything that isn't... it”.

the boy was staring at the young man with no sense of time or of self. the only thing he could perceive was consuming numbness... before the gates of Heaven.

“i should say something... i should respond...”, he thought. still, he remained unable to bring himself to a reaction. even if his mind could slowly begin to process that he was standing against the very one who made up the entire meaning of his life, his heart had died within his chest so many mornings waking up to an empty bed, an empty phone, an empty inbox... to just keep living with this emptiness within his soul had been feeling like having to walk against the blades of million knives... day after day, over and over... so many days in which he'd begged G-d to have mercy on him and take him home... and put an end to this unending agony. so many days in which he'd watched beka come close and then fade away again in non-existence... and along with him, his very soul... that last Av while studying the Parshah of his favorite Deuteronomy and running into his most favorite verse in the entire Torah “...to walk in all His ways and to love Him, and to worship the Lord, your G-d, with all your heart and with all your soul...”, he'd taken a moment to speak to Him with resigned lifelessness: “i do love You with all my heart and all my soul, but how could i feel it if my heart and soul are but dead inside...” so many days... which he'd stopped counting after day 666...

yuri was now staring right in the tender brown eyes of his very soul – and he could. not. feel. it. alive.

“i should, at least, move...”, his reason spoke again. but his body remained paralyzed.

regardless of boy's outer torpor, beka could clearly sense his soul struggle. still, in spite of the overwhelming urge to help it and console him, he knew he had no right at all to even approach against the younger's will. he'd been the one who'd sent yuri to hell (he'd sent to hell himself, too, but it wasn't helping the case now), so he had to be the one ready to be sent back there by him, too.

and he was.

he was waiting humbly, stifling the urge to bury face in the pit between boy's neck and shoulder, to run his hands under yuri's shirt, to feel his skin against himself, to lose himself in their moans!...

yuri's voice (“what a sissy boy!”, the young man had delighted when he'd first heard it feeling that he'd been falling deeper) came like a thunderbolt:

“hello...”.

“hi...”, beka could feel his lip corners faintly moving up while his heart was almost cracking open his rib cage.

and then all existence... disappeared.

when yuri found himself sitting on the doorstep, beka at the opposite end of it, both staring ahead, occasionally exchanging a sentence or two in quiet voice... it felt like a rebirth into a new world. and into a new life. because he had no memory what happened at all after beka's “hi”... and how long it's taken until they ended up here...

“will you stay?”, the teen didn't move sight to his companion. his heart was beating calm, too. even if the answer were “no”, he'd already been there. many times.

“if you want me to...”

yuri remained silent. so many prayers, such desperate begging with no response had made him understand that what he wanted didn't matter much... this sounded cruel now. he wished he had some jameson this instant... there wasn't. he looked down swallowing the urge. his voice remaining flat:

“do you have luggage?”

“just the backpack”.

“where are you staying?”

“i'm still not. i'll find a hotel... if you say you want to see me more...”

the boy couldn't help a move up at the very corner of his lips. he blinked in slow motion, attempting to leave behind distress which was keeping a benumbing hold of his heart, and finally turned sight to beka. beka looked back.

the teen knew he didn't need to speak out loud for the other to hear his thoughts. and he couldn't tell yet if he wanted him to stay or not. but right now he was for once feeling at ease. free of the million knives ripping out his very soul every minute of every hour of every day... week after week, month after month. for a couple of years. and for him, at this moment in time, it was enough.

otabek smiled in response. he wasn't intended to rush the younger. he was ready and (for once!) he was also able to take and give him the time the boy required to sense his spirit live again.

yuri's phone rang and harshly pulled both back to reality. the boy reached for it guessing already who it was.

“shit!”, sharp whisper escaped him as a glance over the screen confirmed it.

“yakov?”

yuri nodded.

“ok, go there. i could...”

“don't worry”, the boy cut in on him. “i can take the day off. for tomorrow we'll figure out what”, talking in his mind to his coach already, he failed to realize he was making plans, actually.

for “we”.

for tomorrow!

of course, it couldn't escape his companion.

“ok...”, beka grinned in response.

**Author's Note:**

> i guess, the text might be considered a variation of [Veridiansoul's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Veridiansoul/pseuds/Veridiansoul) fic ["To Win Him"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11368644).


End file.
